The U.S. Army Has Ordered A New "Light" Tank; The Program Is Likely To Be A Dud

The Army's has ordered a new "light" tank (38 tons) with a 105mm main gun, which is the product of its "Mobile Protected Firepower" (MPF) program. The word "light" gets scare quotes because many countries have light tanks that have a much smaller size and cost. It is about the size of the World War II era M4 Sherman Tank (usually considered a "medium" sized tank). Still, it is the Army's first new "light" tank in 50 years.

This is a disappointing and uninspired product, despite the seven years it spent in development. It is not responsive to the modern military environment. It feels like a weapon designed to fill a vacant category of weapon system types, rather than to meet an existing military need, even if there may have been a need for it decades ago when the concept was first floated and then abandoned in the 1980s or in the mid-1990s when its immediate predecessor cancelled program was dropped.

The fact that the Army managed to carry out multiple conventional wars for twenty-five years without a light tank also suggests that the capabilities that it brings to the Army aren't very important. So does the fact that the Army retired the M1128 Mobile Gun System (a Stryker armored personnel carrier with a 105mm main gun) this year without having a replacement in place.

This is not a military system that we need, and the Marine Corps, which is removing tanks from its array of military systems in favor of much lighter wheeled vehicles with powerful guided missiles, has made a much better choice. I previously exhaustively reviewed other options here.

If I were in Congress looking for places that excessive federal spending that fails to produce commensurate military capability returns could be trimmed, this program would be high on that list.

Still Difficult To Deploy

The only virtue this tank seems to have over the Army's sole existing tank (whose numbers the Army has steadily cut over the last couple of decades), the 70 ton M1A1 Abrams with a 120mm main gun, is that twice as many of them can be transported by a C-17 transport aircraft. But, it is only around two tons lighter than the Army's new M2A4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, which is arguably more capable in the modern battlefield.

The new Mobile Protected Firepower light tank can't be transported by a C-130 transport plan, or by a helicopter, and can't be parachuted into a battlefield either.

So, like the M1A1 Abrams tank, it will take weeks to get large numbers of them to a foreign battlefield. 

It is ten tons heavier than the original Griffin upon which this Griffin II design is based, and the same size as this Griffin II design, despite having a smaller main gun than the 120mm original Griffin design. Its 105mm XM35 gun is originally developed for the Army's Armored Gun System canceled in 1996. 

Its lower weight, compared to the 70 tons plus M1A Abrams main battle tank may, however, help it cross existing civilian bridges and be transported on foreign rail systems without destroying them, which have been a problem for the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank.  

Limited Protection And Mobility

Details about the MPF's capabilities and specifications are hard to come by.

Its main gun probably has a range of about 4 km (while many modern anti-tank missiles have a range of 3.75 km to 10 km) and its rounds are probably about 9-14 pounds each with about 30 round carried at a time with an autoloader for at least some of them.

It isn't clear how this new light tank will perform in the narrow streets of most of the world in urban combat settings, narrow jungle roads, or in narrow mountainous passes, all of which have been problems for previous U.S. tanks.

Its treads mean it will be the slowest moving military vehicles in their units (the top speed of the British Ajax tank with which it has some commonality is 42 miles per hour; the cancelled M8 had a speed of 45 miles per hour), so it would hold back the capacity of units with which it is deployed to maneuver rapidly.

As a treaded vehicle, it will also have high diesel fuel demands per mile (the cancelled M8 had a 2 miles per gallon fuel efficiency and a range of 300 miles), making a large and vulnerable logistics trail necessary. Its treads may help in off roading in relatively open terrain or on sand, but the utility of this feature will be limited by the fact that none of the other vehicles in the units it is scheduled to be deployed with are treaded.

It isn't the least bit stealthy. 

Certainly, it will be secure against small arms fire, shrapnel. It may even have enough armor to survive and continue to function after being hit by light anti-tank guns, recoilless rifles (a.k.a. bazookas), and smaller rocket propelled grenades.

But, it would appear to be a sitting duck vis-a-vis an opponent with modern anti-tank missiles or large artillery rounds, just as even the more advanced tanks in the Ukraine war are right now. Modern anti-tank missiles have a longer range than its main gun, can penetrate its armor, and are light enough for all sorts of vehicles to carry (including light helicopters and retrofitted general aviation aircraft like Cessnas).

It doesn't appear to have any meaningful active defenses, anti-drone capabilities, or anti-aircraft capabilities, which are key to survivability in the modern battlefield, nor does it have any missiles. The design could reputedly be modified to add secondary weapons and active defenses, presumably at great additional expense and with some additional weight, but right now that's vaporware for another day. 

Similarly, at least at the outset, it isn't designed so it can be operated remotely or autonomously.

It isn't clear how resistant it will be to land mines and improved explosive devices (IEDs) compared to Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle standards. These threats frequently damaged and disabled M1A Abrams tanks, although rarely to the point where the soldiers in its were seriously injured or killed. 

These limitations effectively confine these new light tanks to very low threat environments.

A Narrow Mission For Vulnerable Weak Firepower

There are few things that its 105mm main gun can do that aren't done as well or better by much lighter missiles carried by more mobile vehicles, although the cost per tank round will be much lower than the cost of a missile.

Army officials don't even claim that it would be useful against tanks in opposing forces or opposing force mobile artillery units. The envision it being used instead against light armored or unarmed ground vehicles in enemy forces. But, without lighter secondary weapons, it is also basically useless as an anti-personnel system. 

Breaking Defense (see the link below) asserts that the Army believes that it "will provide the Army’s infantry brigades with a light tank for directing firepower against enemy positions and bunkers on the battlefield." But, defeating stationary bunkers and targets that can be penetrated with a 105mm gun has not historically been a serious unmet need of the U.S. Army with its existing capabilities.

For example, Stryker armored personnel carriers also came in a M1128 Mobile Gun System, an assault gun Stryker variant retired in 2022 with a 105mm gun, providing the same offensive capacity plus a squad of infantry. In that version, the Stryker was seventeen tons lighter than this new light tank. Admittedly, the 105mm gun Stryker still probably too heavy for a C-130 transport plane, but it is still capable of being shipped at least three at time on a C-17, instead of two at a time, and could also provide more vehicles per round of sealift. The Stryker is also faster and much less fuel hungry than tracked vehicles like the MPF.

A Stryker is less heavily armored than the Army's new light tank (which will be christened with a name in October), but it isn't clear that this will make much of a difference, as this light tank still isn't safe to deploy in a high threat environment where modern anti-tank missiles are present or the tank's forces lack air superiority. 

Also, the new light tank will still need dismounted infantry to support it against other light infantry forces with anti-tank weapons to deploy in a modern combined arms approach, again limiting its value in high threat environments.

Slow Development And Delivery

This tank was meant to replace the Army's last light tank, the M551A1 Sheridan, a Vietnam War-era design that had an overly complex 152mm gun/missile launcher as its primary armament. The last M551A1s were retired from active duty service in 1997, and from cold storage in 2003. 

While the formal procurement program for this tank began seven years ago, in 2015, a predecessor program (BAE's M8 Armored Gun System, which was the model for the BAE entry for this contract) started in the 1980s and was cancelled in 1996. 

In the 1980s, either BAE's M8, or the General Dynamics winner of the MPF contract, might have been a decent system that could have filled at least some of the Army's needs. But, as noted above, the realities of conventional warfare with tanks have changed, while the design the Army has chosen in this case is still little better than par for the course for thirty years ago.

The first tank in this order is scheduled to be delivered in December 2023, and ready for deployment perhaps a year after that. There are some indications from the reporting that General Dynamics will be struggling to delivery the vehicles it has contracted to provide on time, even at the slow pace contemplated by the contract due to supply chain issues.

The 504 tank contract isn't expected to be fully delivered until 2035. The fact that it will take twelve and a half more years to get the full order delivered, after decades in the procurement phase that it only won because the other competitor for the contract "BAE Systems reportedly had severe difficulties in delivering its initial prototypes to the Army. Janes' reported that it had been eliminated from the MPF competition in March," isn't impressive either. 

The British Ajax tank based upon  the same design has proved a nightmare so far in the production process:

[It] was delayed due to design and testing problems. Test crews were required to wear noise cancelling headphones and be checked for hearing loss at the end of operations and the vehicles were unable to reverse over obstacles more than 20 centimeters high. As of March 2021, the British Army had taken deliveries of the Ares variant, whilst 12 Ajax variants are going through acceptance testing. In June 2021 it was revealed that trials of Ajax variants were halted from November 2020 to March 2021 due to excessive vibration and noise, leaving crews suffering from nausea, swollen joints and tinnitus. Test crews were then limited to 105 minutes inside and 20 miles per hour (32 km/h). The excessive vibration while moving was also damaging electronic systems and preventing armament from stabilising. Suspension issues on the Ajax variant meant turrets could not fire while moving. The hulls were of inconsistent lengths, and had non-parallel sides, which means the vibration problems do not manifest in a uniform manner making it exceedingly difficult to determine if vibration is from a fundamental design problem or build quality failures.

A leaked report doubted whether the Ajax Armoured Vehicle programme would be delivered on time and within budget, and suggested that there was a real risk that the vehicles' credibility would be questioned by troops, and morale impacted.

One would hope that the MPF design and manufacturing effort will learn from this missteps and avoid them. But, these developments aren't precisely confidence inspiring either.  

Still, perhaps the slow production scale is good in the sense of making it easier to cut the number of tanks purchased short when it predictably proves to be something the Army doesn't need, outside of a vary narrow niche mission.

At What Price?

It will cost $2.26 million each if all 504 tanks contemplated in the contract are purchased. And, at a total budget price of $1.14 billion, the entire fleet of these proposed light tanks costs only about as much as a single surface warship, or a single long range bomber, or a squadron of fighter jets. 

But, this price may be grossly understated. According to Breaking Defense (at the link below): "the program had a total lifecycle cost of $17 billion across a 30-year lifespan." The brings the all in price per tank to more like $32 million each of total costs, over the like cycle of each tank.

Also, this tank increases the Army's need for new heavier transport aircraft and sealift capacity to deploy it, at an immense cost that could easily exceed the total costs of the tanks themselves, since airlift and sealift resources are already scarce, even though it won't be very useful when it arrives in the war zone. 

The Story

The Warzone hits the basic facts:

For the first time since the Cold War, the U.S. Army is set to acquire and field a new light tank. The service announced today that General Dynamics Land Systems has won its Mobile Protected Firepower program competition and has been awarded a contract worth up to $1.14 billion.

The initial Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) contract award will cover an initial low-rate production order of 96 vehicles. The Army expects to take delivery of the first examples, from an initial lot of 26 MPFs, in December 2023 and have its first unit fully equipped with them by 2025. The service presently plans to buy a total of 504 new light tanks, with most of them arriving by the end of 2035. It's not immediately clear if this figure includes any of the preproduction examples that General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) already supplied for testing.

The GDLS MPF design, which is set to public receive a formal name this fall at the Association of the U.S. Army's main annual convention in Wasghtion, D.C, is based on the company's Griffin II. Its main armament is a 105mm gun – unlike the 120mm type found on the original Griffin demonstrator – mounted in a turret derived from the one on the M1 Abrams tank. It uses a version of the fire control system used in the M1A2 System Enhanced Package Version 3 (SEPv3) variant, which you can read more about here.

Griffin II was itself derived from the Austrian-Spanish ASCOD armored vehicle series, which also formed the basis of the much-troubled Ajax infantry fighting vehicle for the British Army. . . .

Under the Army's current plans, the majority of the new MPFs will be spread across four battalions. These units will provide additional armored firepower for the service's dismounted Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs), which currently only have light tactical vehicles – Humvees that are now in the process of being replaced by Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) – armed with .50 caliber M2 machine guns, 40mm Mk 19 automatic grenade launchers, and TOW anti-tank missiles, for organic mobile fire support.

“The answer is in the name," Army Maj. Gen. Ross Coffman, director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team, told reporters when asked what the primary mission of these vehicles would be earlier today, according to Breaking Defense. 

"It’ll give the light infantry units a mobile, protected firepower that … can remove impediments on the battlefield [like light armored vehicles and fortifications] to ensure our infantry women and men make it to the objective."

Exactly how these vehicles will be deployed and employed would seem to remain to be seen. Light is relative in the case of the MPF design, which is is said to be around 38 tons. This is only around two tons lighter than the Army's new M2A4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, but is 20 tons heavier than the M551A1. It is of course substantially lighter than the Army's latest versions of the M1 tank, which are over 70 tons.

The Army had originally described MPF more in terms of a spiritual successor to the Sheridan, which was not only air-transportable, but also air-droppable. The requirement for the new MPF to be parachutable onto the battlefield was subsequently dropped. A single Air Force C-17A Globemaster III cargo aircraft is expected to be able to carry two of them at a time when flying them to forward airstrips. . . .

The Army's selection of a winning MPF design also comes amid a renewed debate about the future of tanks and other heavier armored vehicles based on observations from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The MPF program itself had first emerged as part of a broader shift in focus within the Army, and the U.S. military as a whole, toward being better prepared for more conventional conflicts in light of Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and its subsequent support for separatists in that country's eastern Donbas region. 

Regardless, a quarter of a century after the retirement of the M551A1 from combat duty with no direct replacement in the wings, the Army is now set to begin buying a new fleet of light tanks.

More coverage is available at Breaking Defense.